Yes, I have full faith in my new phone the HTC EVO to do everything the iPad does and more. Yes my phone can do more, so why do we need the iPad? You dont! This is just simply marketing hype.
I graciously bow down to Apple when it comes to the iPhone (a genius concept, one of a kind and first one out the gate), but I am not drooling over the iPad. This is the first generation, so if anything I would wait for the Gen 3, that is usually when a majority of the kinks are worked out.
Let take a list of the reason why to STAY AWAY from the iPad, thanks to my homies @ 3fold (http://3foldcomm.com/ipad-overhyped-or-underestimated/)
* Multitasking: Seriously, Apple? You want to take on and destroy the army of netbooks, you have to include multitasking. For those who may not be familiar with the annoying one-app-only capabilities of the iPhone operating system, this means no listening to iTunes or Pandora while surfing the web. One thing at a time, such a quaint, and inexplicable, concept.
* Still no Flash. Again, you can’t take on netbooks without offering the most basic features users expect. Without Flash, you’ve removed important functionality from countless websites and denied users the ability to stream videos and television programming. Not cool.
* 3G unlimited plans will cost you $30 per month…at AT&T. Only at AT&T (US). Even the lack of a contract requirement and an unlocked product doesn’t make Apple’s decision to keep AT&T as the sole service provider easier to swallow.
* No camera. Not in the front, not in the back, no video, no still photography. Nada. All my dreams of having face-to-face staff meetings over Skype while sipping a latte at a Starbucks while the rest of the team looks on enviously from the office have been dashed.
* Too much pressure. The publishing and news industries are already looking to the iPad as their potential savior. Mac lovers had dreams of magical technology fairies dancing in their heads before the gadget was even announced. I’m sure there were even some that hoped the iPad would end the recession, create millions of new jobs, stop world hunger, and fix the environment. Alas, it will not be able to do any of these things…yet.